Americans Still Awaiting Trump's Personal Taxes

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on his executive order that aims to expand apprenticeships to train people for millions of unfilled skilled jobs.

President Trump issued a 98-page disclosure of his financial records Friday to the Office of Government Ethics outlining his assets during the campaign and in his time in office. Though the disclosure offers insight into Trump’s businesses, he has yet to release his tax returns, leaving many of the questions surrounding his finances unanswered.

Trump owes a minimum of $315 million dollars to 10 creditors in the past 15 months. According to an estimate in the Washington Post, this means his real estate business and hotel assets are worth at least $1.4 billion -- an unprecedented wealth for a sitting president.

These disclosures, however, don't require Trump to detail exact income, how much he paid in taxes, profits or losses from his various businesses, whether he has any holdings in foreign companies and how much he has donated to charity.

Trump and members of the administration have pushed back against calls for him to issue his tax returns, most recently contending that his taxes are "under audit" by the IRS.

"I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it [release returns] until the audit is finished, obviously. And I think people would understand that," Trump said during CNN's Republican debate in February 2016.

On taxes, answers (& repeated questions) are same from campaign: POTUS is under audit and will not release until that is completed. #nonews

Senior adviser Kellyanne Conway has repeatedly defended the decision by the president not to release his tax return. She repeated Trump's argument that he was under audit, adding in an interview that the Americans aren't concerned with the president's taxes.

"The White House response is he's not going to release his tax returns," said Conway on ABC's "This Week" shortly after Trump got elected in January. "We litigated this all through the election. People didn't care," Conway added.

In April, a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group reported that 64 percent of Republicans felt Trump should release his tax returns.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in April that "nothing [had] changed" when asked whether Trump would release the returns.

"The president is under audit, it's a routine one, it continues, and I think the American public knows clearly where he stands, this was something he made very clear during the election cycle," Spicer told reporters on April 17.

Trump has previously made the release of his tax returns conditional on the perceived offenses of his political enemies. In 2011, Trump said that he was "maybe" going to release his tax returns when President Obama released his birth certificate. "Maybe I'm going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate," Trump told "Good Morning, America" anchor George Stephanopoulos. "I may tie my tax returns, I'd love to give my tax returns, I may tie my tax returns into Obama's birth certificate."

On the debate stage with Hillary Clinton in September 2016, Trump promised to release his tax return if Clinton released missing emails.

"I will release my tax returns, against my lawyer's wishes, when [Clinton] releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted," he said to moderator Lester Holt.

Clinton, in the debate, responded by suggesting that Trump isn't as rich as he claims.

"Maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is," Clinton said in the debate. She added that maybe Trump is "not as charitable as he claims to be," or that perhaps "he's paid nothing in federal taxes."

By not releasing his tax returns on tax day, Trump became the first president in 40 years to not release his tax returns. On April 15, the deadline to file taxes, "more than 125,000 people in more than 200 communities around the world" marched to demand that Trump release his tax returns, according to Taxmarch.org.